Part 12

“Lord!” he said in amazement. “Lord, what should I explain?” then, incredulously, “This cannot be because I am a half-day late! No stress was laid upon the time—no need of haste—” He broke off as his clearer vision separated Olaf’s blue-and-gold figure from the blue-and-gold curtains. “You here! Now is it likely that any lying tale of yours could have worked this—Yet it is not possible, lord, that you would have listened to him! That—”

Again he broke off; but this time with a smothered cry as, turning, he beheld the face that Helvin thrust into the light. Gnawed and blood-streaked lips, it showed; while bright as the ruddy light in the dusky room flickered devil-fire in the murky eyes. They turned to keep watch of Thorgrim’s son, even while the tongue belonging to them addressed the song-maker.

“Is it not possible, boor that you are, that you could have leaned too heavily on my favor? Olaf says justly that one would think I feared you had some secret knowledge of me, so forbearing have I been. What! because out of my service I spare you three weeks’ time—ill spare it—must you take a half-day more? Without a word—a sign—and then defend your fault with noisy voice and rampant head? Let me see you tame it. Speak me humbly if you would not push my temper to the uttermost.”

And yet Rolf’s son did not throttle him,—only stood looking at him with head lowered and thrust forward like a bull moose at bay. The hand Olaf had laid on his hilt, in the hope of being called upon to defend his lord, fell paralyzed. He doubted the ears that brought him Randvar’s low answer:

“Lord, I entreat you to hold down your anger. Remember that we are not alone, and—”

“Call you that humbleness which would command me where and before whom I shall rebuke you?” Starkad’s son snarled. “Now do you stand so stubborn as to think that I will hold back from punishing you? Bend lower—low as your knee!”

Again Olaf made a hopeful move towards his sword. Again his arm fell benumbed. Rigidly as a man of iron, Rolf’s son had knelt, his sinewy, brown hands gripping each other behind his back.

Who was the stillest for a while it would have been hard to say—the Songsmith or the gaping courtman or the young ruler, who stood wiping great drops from his forehead while his devil-like eyes watched Olaf from under his palm.

“Are your French courtmen better broken?” he sneered at last.

Out of his trance Olaf came slowly. Drawing his shapely form erect, he laughed mellowly in his enjoyment.

“Jarl, I make you a hundred compliments! The proudest king in France had not dared say one-half as much to his meanest lackey. I make you a thousand apologies for my stupidity! I see now that what makes the forester a comfort to you is not his boldness but his meekness. I give you ten thousand thanks for the merry lesson you have taught me!”

Bowing almost at the song-maker’s side, he laughed almost in the song-maker’s ear, and laughing bowed himself gracefully out of the room.

Swiftly as well as gracefully it must have been, for while the sound of the soft mirth was still in the air, the Jarl rushed forward with the snarl of a wolf robbed of its bone, yet Randvar had time to leap ahead of him. On Olaf’s heels, the song-maker shut the door with a thunderous crash, and set his back against it.

XVI

“_He that guesseth, often goes wrong_” —Northern saying.

In the sudden darkness that shut down upon them, the Songsmith felt Helvin’s body dash against his, heard Helvin’s hiss at his ear:

“Let me after him,—do you hear?”

“Let you betray your state to all men? Lord, I have saved your secret—”

“I will kill him only for coming so near to guessing it!”

“Has all sense left you?”

“Off, or he will reach the hall-door before I can catch him! Would you turn my wrath upon yourself?”

“Keep your wrath within bounds, lord, as I kept mine. Do you suppose that after stripping off my pride to wrap it about your cursed secret, I shall allow your folly to undo—”

“Allow? Mother of Heaven! do you know what you are defying?”

“Do you forget that I am not the rabbit-hearted thing I feigned to be—”

“Out of the way!”

“No—”

Short as the word was, it was cut in two by the slam of the great doors at the guard-room’s farther end. One breath Randvar let out in relief, then drew in one in dread and braced himself for the grapple.

But nothing came.

No use to strain his eyes, for darkness was now so thick upon them that it carried a sense of smothering with it. He strained his woodsman’s ear, trained to catch the lightest bending of a twig beneath a fox’s foot, but not so much as the sound of a faintly drawn breath rewarded him. Delicately as a butterfly uses its feelers, he put out a finger, then, and found that the spot where Helvin had stood was empty. More silent than the stealthiest wind that tries to creep unnoted through the forest, he had withdrawn to some quarter of the darkness.

From his head to his feet, shuddering shook the song-maker as his mind strove to follow that withdrawal to its goal, to picture him who stood hidden there. The temptation to let in the firelight to show what thing he faced was so torture-strong that he took his hands off the door-panels on which they were spread out and locked them before him, and gave himself the relief of speaking Helvin’s name in a low voice, entreating, soothing.

No answer came. A windless cavern in the marrow of the earth’s bones had not been stiller. From the living-room without came the rattle of knife and trencher, as the evening meal wore on; the clink of horns with the arrival of drinking-time; by-and-by, snatches of maudlin song. Even the shuffling patter of the thralls the Songsmith caught through the oaken panels, but in the room where he kept vigil, only the thundering echo of his heart throbbing in his ears.

Perhaps its pealing was enough to blunt his hearing. Though he detected no rustle of approach, his cheek was touched of a sudden by a fiery breath, which like a poisonous vapor brought with it dizzy horror. The torture of two hands falling stealthily upon his shoulders—tightening swift to the grip of claws—recalled him for an instant to himself; then again his brain whirled, as a bushy thing that he knew for the mass of Helvin’s blood-red hair was pressed against his face.

Back from it he strained with all his might, fought it off with all the power of his toughened sinews; but with a strength beyond the strength of man, the hands drew him slowly steadily downward.

Suddenly, to his mounting madness, it was no longer Helvin with whom he struggled. It was some being from another world, some nameless Thing against which his gorge rose up in loathing hate. Twice he gasped out warning, then loosened his grasp on the bushy hair, wrenched out his sword and stabbed downward.

With the sinking of blade in flesh, a sharp unhuman scream rang out; the clutch on his shoulders loosened. Even before he could tear off the dragging weight and hurl it from him, it had fallen heavily, shaking the timbered floor.

Like an echo came cries from the guard-room without, thunder of feet, clangor of weapons. Randvar was sent staggering across the room as the door behind him was burst open by a dozen brawny shoulders. On the threshold appeared Visbur, the grizzled old leader; behind him, two-score excited faces.

On the threshold they paused, staring at the sight the inrushing firelight revealed,—Helvin Jarl lying in a pool of blood; beyond him the figure of his song-maker, bristling-haired, a bloody sword in his hand. Half wrathful, half incredulous, their voices rose:

“Rolf’s son a traitor!”

But no thought had the Songsmith for them. On the face upturned from the blood pool his gaze was riveted. It was Helvin’s face, unmarred, unchanged; in the gray eyes only unutterable anguish; anguish unutterable on the finely cut mouth that was trying vainly to form and send forth words. It was Helvin, his friend, that his madness had laid low. With a hoarse cry, he flung the weapon from him, and turned and buried his head in the bed-curtains.

As from a distance, he heard the scuffling of feet staggering under a heavy burden, and felt the jar of the bed as they lowered their load upon it; but he came back to consciousness only when stern hands laid hold of him and drew him from his shelter. He realized, then, the consequences of his deed as he met the awful reproach of the looks bent on him and saw the barrier of crossed spears that had been set before him.

Visbur said: “Chief, there is no need for us to wait for lawmen. Say only whether he is to be shot or hanged.”

Pushing off those who were trying to cut away his robe and find his wound, the Jarl dragged himself up by the bed-draperies, turning a ghastly face upon the room.

“Free him,” his lips made out to shape.

After a bewildered pause, the old warrior said slowly: “I suppose what you are trying to order is, ‘Slay him,’ not understanding that I said it should be done before the clots on his blade were dry. All I ask, chief, is in what manner he is to suffer death?”

With as much force as his half-swoon left him, the Jarl shook his head, repeating the words so that there was no mistaking them: “Free him—and let him to me.”

But even as the Songsmith turned, speaking his friend’s name unsteadily, Visbur made his men a sign; and the spear-wall remained.

“Hold him and take him forth,” the leader commanded. “Starkad’s son has gone astray out of his wits. I will answer for the act when he is sane again.”

“You will answer—with your life,” the Jarl said between gasping breaths. “While I live—I shall have my way. And my luck is not so good that I am dying. It is no more than a flesh-wound. I swooned from—from my rage. Let him to me.”

This time he stretched out a shaking hand, and the spears fell. In a moment the Songsmith was kneeling beside the bed, the arm that had so nearly mastered him lying around his neck.

“Tell them—enough. Enough to clear yourself,” Helvin murmured.

Around the circle of hard old faces that until now had met his glance so cordially, Rolf’s son sent a beseeching look, then dropped his eyes in despair.

“Jarl, I could never say so much as to make them believe me; before them I stand proved a traitor who has turned blade against his lord. And how shall I speak against the truth of that judgment? I am every man’s dastard. Lord, I would as lief go out with them.” His voice broke, and he did not seek to mend it.

But Helvin spoke as curtly as his faintness allowed, “Raise me up,” and when that was done, “Bring me wine.” From the beaker, he lifted a face pitched to determination.

“Let all listen to my words, that I need not speak twice. He bore from me more than any of you would have borne. He lost his temper only when I drove him to frenzy. He struck only to save his life.”

“To save his life, chief? And you with bare hands!” old Visbur said slowly.

Of a sudden, sick shuddering seized upon the Jarl, so that his head drooped and sank. But even as they started towards him, he raised it—raised himself with the force of his passion.

“Now damnation take such loyalty!” he cried. “I have told you that he is not guilty as you think,—I will lower myself to no more explaining. He goes free because I will it. And if any man reports this happening outside, so that even in people’s thoughts my friend be held up to reproach, that man shall be outlawed, and have my wrath besides. Bear that in mind—and leave me now to him—whose support I have always found best.”

Upon the song-maker’s shoulder he fell, spent; and the guard who went last from the room heard his moan:

“My friend, my friend, this is that one thing that could tear us asunder! It will be your life or mine.”

The man had passed out of hearing when Randvar answered slowly: “If that be true, lord, then mine is the life that will end. I know now which would be the easier to bear.”

XVII

“_Cold are the counsels of women_” —Northern saying.

Blinded by the change from the hall’s unbroken shade to the court-yard’s untempered light, Randvar lingered on the threshold. As upon helpless prey, the unsparing sunshine of the spring morning fastened on him and pointed out that his leather tunic had been dragged open at the throat and his sleeves torn out at the shoulders, that his face was haggard and his eyes bloodshot. The thralls, hurrying to and from the buildings with fresh water and clean straw, laughed indulgently as they glanced at him, and murmured one to another: “Behold a man who drank deep last night!”

No more than if he had been wine-deadened was he conscious of their comments or their presence. He had drunk of misery as of a heady liquor, and like a drunkard’s thirst for water was his longing for the presence of the woman he loved. Seeking her—conscious only of his need of her—he made his way across the glaring stretch of the court-yard, through the dim length of the women’s hall, to the shrine of her alcove bower.

Before he reached it, its open door gave him view of tapestried walls in whose dusky east a mirror of silver-gilt hung like a rising sun, of white-robed tirewomen moving now and again across it, of the girl who stood before it while they finished dressing her, her exquisite head agleam against the dark hangings like a jewel in its casket. His sense of beauty stirred through his heaviness, and quickened song-makers’ fancies in his mind.

“The web of her hair glows as the dragon’s treasure glowed in the gloom of his den.... As a pearl from a setting of red gold shines her face from her tresses.... As rare as a jewel is Brynhild the Proud ... as unbending ... as untender....”

Into his longing crept something akin to wistfulness. He stood gazing at her in silence as—encountering his eyes in the mirror—she raised her head with a motion of surprise. He wondered why she did not turn when he advanced, but remained regarding his reflection and spoke as to the man in the bright oval.

“Has Freya’s son lost sight of my dignity, as well as of his own, that he comes in disorder into my presence?”

“Disorder?” he repeated, looking for the first time at his reflection.

An instant he stood abashed before it, so did it jar upon the stately harmony; then the grim scene that had brought him to that condition came back and dwarfed everything else. With a gesture of passionate scorn, he turned from the mirror.

“Jarl’s sister, if ever it happen to you to reach the sap of the Tree of Life, such things as clothes will seem less important than cobwebs blowing from its branches!” he said, and whirling on his heel, he turned and stood in the door, staring away with unseeing eyes.

Yrsa the Lovely, fastening a velvet pouch to her mistress’s girdle of filigree, let it fall with a soft thud; but that was all the sound there was in the room until the Jarl’s sister began to speak coldly to the other maids:

“I want to wear the silver neck-chain—No, not that one—the one to match this girdle. Yes, that. And, Nanna, I wish you would bring me the kerchiefs,—all that have a silver fringe.” As light footsteps answered her, and the rustle of silk, she gave other low-voiced orders.

Gradually, the calm routine brought the Songsmith back into touch with the world about him. Staring away over the whirring wheels, he told himself that it must look to her as though he had come unsobered from a night’s carousal,—that it was even better she should think so than guess the true reason for his dulled wits. Girding up his patience for this new trial, he turned back wearily.

“It is fair and right, Jarl’s sister, that I should have blame for showing you aught but the bright side of my manners, which are tarnished enough at best. I will take my leave now, and come back only when the wine-clouds have cleared from my mind.” He was crossing the threshold when her outstretched hand stayed him.

“I would rather you would remain, if you have nothing against it,” she said, then spoke over her shoulder to the kneeling tirewomen, who were making the arrangement of her train an excuse for lingering. “Maidens, you have done enough work on those folds. Go out now to your spinning,—excepting only Yrsa. Foster-sister, do you take your quill embroidery to that stool under the window, yonder.”

When she had seen them obey her, she turned back to her lover a face whose expression he could not understand.

“I will begin by saying outright that you need not try to hide the truth under the pretence that it is wine instead of trouble which ails you. I should know better than that even if Thorgrim’s son had not taken pains to let me hear how you were likely to pass the night.”

In his mind he repeated the name of Thorgrim’s son, at first wonderingly, then vengefully; but aloud he said nothing, only continued to look at her in haggard suspense.

A moment her high pride wavered, her beautiful mouth seeming to struggle against tenderness. Coming up to him, she touched her fingers lightly to his rent sleeves, his torn collar, the furrow between his dark brows.

“It is seen that Helvin went even further, after Olaf left! Do you think that his being my brother holds me back from hating him?”

Two emotions the song-maker suddenly knew,—relief that the whole truth was still unknown to her, and a desire to delay those caressing fingers. Capturing them, he held them against his cheek while he asked her what had been said to make her think the Jarl was behaving badly towards him.

At that, her mouth surrendered to indignation.

“Enough was said—and more! I liked it well to have Olaf fetch such news,—Olaf, whom I cast off in your favor! And he brought it around so artfully that I could not stop him until it was out. He said that because you had lingered that little while in the lane, Helvin dared to upbraid you, to threaten you—Now, I will not put it into words! He said that the Jarl spoke to you as a man dare not speak to his thrall, lest the slave turn,—and that you did not turn!” She plucked her hands from his hold, drew herself away from him. “He said that you took it submissively—that when he came away, you were on your knees!”

No longer was she pearl-pale, but crimson with the blood of her scourged pride. An instant her passion reacted on him, so that his face reflected her flush. He muttered that Thorgrim’s son went heavily into debt for a creature that had only one life with which to pay. Then the emotion passed, too slight really to stir his heaviness.

“Yes, I submitted to him,—” he said, “as a well man puts up with the fretfulness of a sick one. Would you have a whole man contend against a cripple? For that is what Helvin is when he speaks temper-trying words, a man crippled in his mind. What difference does it make? since you must know that cowardice could have nothing to do with my behavior. I can think of much pleasanter things to speak of.”

Again a certain wistfulness came into his eyes, and he drew nearer to her.

“Let me feel that I have a peace land in your heart, though all other ports are war-bound. If I were in a death-swoon, the sound of your voice would trickle into my ears like cordial and spread healing through me. Give me of its balm now—of your smile—your love.”

Another step he made towards her—then stopped short. For it was not as a minister of healing she faced him, but as a Valkyria of battle, armored in pride. Like spears she threw her words at him.

“As soon would I that you were a coward as a churl! Churl’s blood—Rolf’s blood—that must be what it is! Freya’s stock would have struck the words from his lips though he were thrice a jarl. Now better be a coward than a clod, too base to know it when you are insulted.”

This time the color that rose to his face remained there, a darkling shade. From under lowering lids he stood looking at her.

“If you would not have me show churl’s blood by losing temper with you,” he said presently, “I ask you to stop talking about this happening. So soon as Helvin got himself in hand again, he made atonement; and that is an end to the matter. What lies on you, who say you love me, is to have faith in my manfulness. And I ask you, moreover, to remember that you are fretting a churl who has already been galled to the quick.”

She greeted the warning as a Valkyria might greet a sign that her opponent is aroused. In her governed voice was the thrill of a trumpet.

“Lose your temper, then, as fast as you may,—and so find your pride! Half-way, I think it is good-nature that makes you bend to him; and half-way, gratefulness for the favors you have taken from him; though you have long known what my wish is, that you should never look to any one else than to me when you stand in need of anything.”

Her satin-shod foot stirred with an angry impulse. “A fine atonement that is given in secret, while he chose that time when you were under the eyes of your enemy to put shame upon you! Can you not understand, Rolf’s son, that you drag me down in your disgrace, since I have done you the honor to promise to wed you? If you have no pride for yourself—for Freya’s name—make some for me, that it be not told around that the man I hold highest in honor is a man Starkad’s son uses like a thrall!”

The Songsmith opened his compressed lips wide enough to let a question through: “Is this a sample of the honor you hold me in?”

“It is the kindest treatment you will ever receive from me until you have wiped out this stain,” she told him.

Then because he did not reply to her, but folding his arms across his breast, turned as though to leave her, she blazed out at him:

“The end of this shall be that you take your choice of two things! Either you go to him and renounce his service, or else you go from me and renounce the hope that I shall ever call you husband.”

He answered her then, his arms outflung like stones from a volcano’s crest, though his voice only deepened.

“May my tongue wither if ever I ask to call myself your thrall! A bad bargain would that be to throw off a man’s rule to be commanded by a woman! Not though she be as fair as you, and I love her as I love you! I have sworn an oath to Helvin Jarl to stand by him as by a brother, and never shall you egg me on to break it. If your lover’s love is not enough, and you must have his freedom also, seek out a lesser man for your favor; for as God lives, my pride that you have scorned—be it king-born or churl-born—will never stoop to your rule!”

With the last word, the door closed behind him.

XVIII

“_But a short while is hand fain of blow_” —Northern saying.

Over field and fallow, through wood and meadow, up hill and down, on—on—on—the song-maker strode, no goal before him, only driving revolt within him.

Whenever road or lane made a turn towards the east, the glaring May sunshine struck him in the face. Fending it off with his bended arm, he conceived a hatred of its stare, of the garish blue sky it fell from, of the bustling sounds it called forth. On all sides they rose in a strident chorus, chattering birds in the hedges, screaming cocks in the barn-yards, racketing children on every green, shrill-laughing women washing clothes at every pond,—even the shouts of distant ploughmen were added by the breeze.

In fitful gusts the warm dry wind went with him like some romping oaf, now rushing ahead down the road to beat up the dust with clumsy glee, now lying in wait around some corner to pounce upon him with snorts of mirth and buffet him and wind his hair across his face. Struggling with it, his fury rose as against some boorish jester. He shouted in its teeth:

“If you had but a body that hands could lay hold of—!”