The Axe (30 page)

They were very silent, the Berg folks, when Haftor had told this story, dryly and calmly. Olav’s name he never mentioned, but after a long pause Ivar asked in sheer despondency if Haftor had heard any news of him—if he were among the fallen.

Haftor hesitated a moment and answered no. It chanced that the men from whom he had first heard this—two white friars from Tunsberg—could give him special news of Olav Audunsson, because he had been at the sister convent, Mariaskog, when the fire of Oslo took place; Olav had been given leave by the Earl before the move upon Oslo, and he had fared south to Elvesyssel to sell some of the land he owned there to the monks of Dragsmark. They said further that, when tidings came to him there of how the Earl’s greatness had been brought to an end, Olav had declared that he owed Lord Alf all that he now possessed and had won back, and he would not part without leave from the first lord to whom he had sworn fealty. Thereupon he had set out into Sweden to seek the Earl.

“ ’Tis odd how unlucky he is, Olav, in the men he chooses to back him,” said Haftor dryly. “They end as outlaws, first the Bishop and now the Earl.—But I trow ’tis in his blood; ’twas a Baglers’ nest, Hestviken, in his forefathers’ time, I have heard.”

“Ay, Baglers’ nest and Ribbungs’ den
were the names folk
gave in old days to Hov and Galtestad and many another manor of our kin, Haftor,“Ivar protested, but his voice was very tame.

Haftor shrugged his shoulders. “Ay—Olav may be a good enough man, for all it seems his fate ever to be on the side of the loser.
My
friend he can never be, but, I will say, ’tis plain enough that his friends like the man. But if Ingunn is to wait for him, she will have to practise patience.”

Ivar objected that this time it might well be that his affairs could quickly be set in order. Haftor merely shrugged again.

It was Ivar who told Ingunn there was but little hope that Olav could take her home this summer. It did not enter his mind to speak at length of Earl Alf’s revolt to a young woman whom he counted somewhat simple and light-minded—so that at first Ingunn did not know that Olav was in as evil a plight as before he had found a helper in Alf Erlingsson.

All she knew was that nothing more was said about her marriage.

Ivar and Lady Magnhild felt somewhat at a loss. They had taken up this affair with both hands and had received Olav with such favour that they could hardly turn against him, now that he had been plunged so unexpectedly into a new strait. So they chose to be perfectly silent about the whole matter.

Kolbein Toresson was at his own home and lay abed for the most part—he had had a stroke. So Ingunn did not hear much of what he said. And Haftor held his peace. He had received one half of the blood-money in excellent English coin and judged it unprofitable to try whether the atonement could be upset after that. Moreover he had some pity for Ingunn, and he thought it might be just as well in the end if Olav got her and carried her off to another part of the country—her kinsfolk had neither honour nor profit of her. When old Lady Aasa was gone, she would only be a burden to her sister and brothers. And he was now foster-father to Hallvard and Jon, Steinfinn’s sons, and good friends with the boys—Haakon Gautsson had also quarrelled with his young brothers-in-law.

So Ingunn was left once more to herself, to sit brooding in her corner with her grandmother.

The first autumn she still went on as she was wont—she span, weaved, and sewed her bridal garments. But by degrees she lost heart for the work. No one ever said a word of her future. She left off hoping that Olav would come
soon—
and immediately it was as though she had never believed it in earnest. Their meetings during the days he had last been here had left behind a vague disappointment in her heart—Olav had been half a stranger to her.

She did not seem able to make his image fit into her old dreams of living with him in his house, where they were master and mistress and had a flock of little children about them—and yet they were the same two who had loved each other at Frettastein.

So she seized upon the memory of the only hour they two had been alone together, face to face and lips to lips—that last day, when they sat together in the meadow. She let her thoughts weave fresh pictures from their talk and from his one ardent, passionate caress—when he burned a kiss upon her and bent her neck backward to the ground. She dreamed that he had yielded to his own desire and her prayers—and had taken her with him. She called to mind what her mother had told her the night before her death—of her bridal ride over hill and dale—the daughter now had this to feed her fancies.—Next summer, the second since Olav’s visit, she chanced to go with Lady Magnhild far up into the Gudbrandsdal, to a wedding at Ringabu. They stayed some weeks there with their kinsfolk at Eldridstad, and these took them up to their mountain sæter, that Lady Magnhild might see their wealth of cattle. For the first time in her life Ingunn went up a mountain, so high that she was above the forests: she looked out over bare wastes with osier scrub and stunted birches and greyish-yellow bogs, and in the distance rose hill after hill, as far as the northern horizon, where snow mountains closed the view, with clouds about their sides.

At this great wedding she had been made to wear bright-coloured clothes, a silver belt, and floating hair. At the time she had been only shy and confused. But it left its mark in her. When she was back in her grandmother’s room at Berg, new images floated before her mind—she saw herself walking with Olav, jewelled and glorious—it might be in the palace of some foreign king; this seemed to compensate her for all these years she had sat
in the corner. And in her dreams she wandered over the fells with her outlawed man—they rode through mountain streams, which foamed swifter and clearer than the rivers in the lowlands—there was more music in their sound, less roar—and their beds shone with white pebbles. Every sound under heaven, the light, the air, were different on the mountains from what they were in the fields below. She was journeying with Olav toward the distant blue fells, through deep valleys and over wide moorlands again; they rested in stone huts like the Eldridstad sæter.—At the thought of these fells a wildness was born within her. She who had longed in such meek abandonment to fate, who had only wept quietly under the bedclothes now and then, when she seemed too bitterly oppressed—she felt an unruly spirit quicken within her. And her dreams became chequered and fantastic—she wove into them such incidents as she had heard of in ballads and stories, she imagined all those things which she had never seen; stone castles roofed with lead, and warriors in blue coats of mail, and ships with silken sails and golden pennants. This was all more gorgeous and splendid than the old pictures of the farmstead with Olav and their children—but it was far more airy and confused and dreamlike.

Arnvid Finnsson had been at Berg once or twice in the last years, and they had spoken of Olav, but he knew no more of his friend than that Olav was said to be alive and in Sweden. But the winter after her journey to the fells—it was New Year, and men wrote
1289
after God’s birth—Arnvid came to Berg, very cheerful. Arnvid was wont to go almost every year to a fair at Serna, and there he had met Olav that autumn; they had been together for four days. Olav said that the Earl had himself released him from his oath; he would have Olav think now of his own welfare—and he had given him tokens to Sir Tore Haakonsson of Tuns-berg, who was married to Lord Alf’s sister. Olav had now entered the service of a Swedish lord in order to provide himself with means against his home-coming, but he intended to go home to Norway at the New Year—perhaps he was already at Hestviken.

Ingunn was made happy; at least so long as Arnvid stayed at Berg, she felt her courage awaken once more. But afterwards her hope seemed to pale again and fade away; she dared not abandon herself to the expectation that something was really going to happen. Nevertheless there was a brighter background to her
thoughts and dreams that winter, while she watched the approach of spring—and perhaps Olav would come, as Arnvid had said.

In summer the women of Berg, when they had to smoke meat or fish, used to take it out of doors. In the birch grove north of the homestead there were some great bare rocks; they lighted a fire in a crevice of the rock and covered it with a chest without a bottom, within which they hung what was to be smoked; and then a woman had to sit and tend the fire.

One day before Hallvard’s Eve,
Aasa Magnusdatter wished to have some fish smoked, and Dalla and Ingunn went out with it. The old woman lighted a fire and got it to burn and smoke as it should; but then she had to go home to tend a cow, and Ingunn was left alone.

The soil was almost bare here in the grove, brown and bleak, but the sun on the rocks was warm—fair-weather clouds drifted high up in the silky blue sky. But the bay, of which she could see a glimpse between the naked white birch-trunks, was still covered with rotten, thawing ice, and on the far shore the snow still glared white among the woods, right down to the beach. Here on the sunny side there was a trickling and gurgling of water everywhere, but the thaw had not yet given its full roar to the voice of spring.

Ingunn was happy and contented as she sat in the sunshine watching the smoke. She had already been there some hours and was just wondering whether she would have to go and look for more juniper when she heard someone come riding along the path above where she had been sitting. She looked up—it was only a man on a little shaggy, ill-kept dun pony.—In doing so she pushed against her water-bucket; it stood unsteadily on the rocks and upset.

She saw with annoyance that she would have to go and fetch water—and Dalla had taken the wooden bucket; the one she had was of stone, with two ears and a stick thrust through them to lift it by. She picked it up; then the man called from the path above—he had jumped off his pony and came running down through the withered heather: “Nay, nay, fair maid—I will do that for you!”

He threw his arms around her waist to check himself, pressing her to him in his haste, took the bucket from her, and set off again briskly down to the burn. Ingunn laughed with him in spite of herself as she stood watching him—he had shown such a mass of white teeth when he laughed.

He was dark-complexioned and curly-haired—the hood of his cloak was thrown back and he was bareheaded. He was very tall and slight and active, but rather loose-jointed in all his movements, and his voice had been so merry—

He came back with the water, and she saw he was very young. His swarthy face was narrow and bony, but not ugly—the eyes were large, yellow or light brown, merry, and clear. His mouth was big, with its arched row of teeth, but the curve of his nose was fine and bold. The man was dressed in a proper moss-green kirtle and an ample brown cloak; he wore a short sword in his belt.

“There!” he said laughing. “If you would have more help, you need but to ask me!”

Ingunn laughed too; she said she had no need of more, and it was much that he had already done for her—the bucket was heavy.

“Far too heavy for so fine and young a maid. Are you from Berg?”

Ingunn answered yes.

“ ’Tis thither I am bound—I have a message and a letter from my lord to your lady. But now I shall stay here and help youthen I shall be so late that Lady Magnhild must house me for the night. And then you will let me sleep with you?”

“No doubt I shall.” Ingunn had no other thought but that the boy was jesting—he was no more than a boy, she saw, and she laughed with him.

“But now I will stay here and talk with you awhile,” he said. “ ’Tis a tiresome task you have, and lonely it must be for you to sit here alone in the wood, young and fair as you are.”

“It were worse to sit here, I trow, if I were old and ugly. And ’tis not lonely in this wood. I have sat here but four hours, and already you have come this way.”

“Ay, then I doubt not I was sent to pass the time for you—stay, I will help you; I am better at this work than you!” Ingunn went about it rather awkwardly, for she did not like to get the smoke in
her eyes and throat. The boy dipped the juniper sprays in the water and laid them on the embers, jumping aside when the smoke blew out toward him. “What is your name, fair lass?”

“Why would you know that?”

“Why, for then I will tell you mine. It might be useful for you to know it—since I am to sleep with you tonight?”

Ingunn only shook her head and laughed. “But you are not from these parts?” she asked; there was such a strange tone in his speech, she heard.

“Nay, I am an Icelander. And my name is Teit. Now you must tell me yours.”

“Oh, I have no such queer name as yours. I am called naught but Ingunn.”

“That may be good enough for you—for the present; ’tis as fine a name as the finest I wot of. If I find a better, I will write it in golden letters and give it to you, Ingunn rosy-cheeks.”

He helped her to take out the smoked fish and put in fresh. Lying on the ground, he picked out a trout, split it, and began to eat.

“You take the fattest and best,” said Ingunn with a laugh.

“Is she so grudging of her food, Lady Magnhild, your mistress, that she would refuse us poor folks a fish-bone?” Teit laughed back at her.

Ingunn guessed he took her for a serving-maid. She was clad in a brown homespun dress with a plain leather belt at her waist, and she wore her hair as usual, in two plaits without ornament, simply bound with blue woollen knots.

Teit seemed disposed to stay with her for good. He tended the smoke for her, dipped juniper, and laid it on; between whiles he stretched himself on the ground by her side and talked. She learned that he was now clerk to the Sheriff’s officer in these parts. He was the son of a priest whose name was Sira Hall Sigurdsson, and he had been at the school in Holar; but Teit had no mind to be a priest, he chose rather to go out into the world and seek his fortune.

“Have you found it, then?” asked Ingunn.

“I will give you an answer to that tomorrow”—he smiled darkly.

She could not help liking this merry boy. And then he asked if he might take a kiss. It came over her—there could be no harm. So she said neither yes nor no—simply sat still and laughed. And
Teit took her round the waist and kissed her full on the mouth. But after that he would not let her go—and he slipped his hands in under her clothes, grew somewhat indelicate in his advances. Ingunn tried to defend herself, she was near being afraid—and she bade him cease.