In the Wilderness

  That night Olav could not fall asleep. As he lay he felt the slight rocking of the vessel in the stream and heard the sound of the water underneath her—and through his mind the memories came floating—of Ingunn, when they were young. Sometimes they gathered speed, came faster, wove themselves into visions. He thought he had opened his arms to receive her—and started up, wide awake—felt that he was bathed in sweat, with a strange faintness in all his limbs.

  It was too hot in his barrel; he crawled out and went forward on deck. It was dripping wet with dew; the sky was clear tonight above the everlasting light mists that floated over the river and the marshy banks. A few great stars shone moistly through the haze. The water gurgled as it ran among the piles of the wharf. A man was rowing somewhere out in the darkness.

  Olav seated himself on the chest of arms in the bow. Bending forward over the gunwale, he gazed out into the night. The outline of the woods in the south showed black against the dark sky. A dog barked far away. Dreams and memories continued to course through him; it was their youth that rose from the dead and appeared to him. All the years since then, his outlawry, the time of disaster that came and shattered all his prospects, all the after-years when he had tried to bear his own burden and hers too as well as he could—they seemed to drift past him, out of sight, as he headed back against the stream.

  At last he started up—he had fallen asleep on the chest, and now he was chilled all through. Now he would surely be able to sleep if he crept in again and lay down. Outside, the day was already dawning.

  He grunted when Tomas Tabor came and waked him. Today Tomas could take Leif with him to mass; then he would stay aboard.

  In the course of the afternoon Olav made ready to row ashore. It was warm now in the daytime; he could not bear his haqueton under his kirtle, the one he had brought with him was so heavy, of thick canvas padded with wool. There could be no great danger in going undefended—as yet he had had no quarrel thrust upon him in the town—and it made him so bulky and awkward. Olav girded himself with a short, broad sword before putting on his kirtle, which was split over the left hip so that one could easily get at a concealed weapon. It was a rich kirtle, reaching to the feet, of black French cloth with green embroidery, light enough for warm weather. Ingunn had made it for him many years ago. At that time he had much more need of suitable working-clothes; not often had he had use for this handsome garment, but it was finely sewed and finished. Olav chose a brown, hoodless cloak bordered with marten’s fur and a black, narrow-brimmed felt hat with silver chains about the crown. He pressed it down, so that his greying silvery-golden hair waved out under the brim on every side. But—though he would not admit it to himself—when he took the pains, he still looked a fair and manly man, and few would have guessed that he was as old as seven and thirty winters.

  He rowed straight in to the town and strolled through the streets and alleys. But as soon as the bells began to ring for vespers, he made straight for the church of the Dominicans. Just after him came the blind man and his wife and their two servants.

  Olav had now forbidden Leif to leave the ship after nones; instead he sent him ashore with Tomas Tabor every other morning. In this way he himself could only attend mass every other day, but it would be too bad if the young man met with a mischance out there in Southwark. And it would bring trouble on them all if one of their ship’s company came to any harm ashore.

  The blind man came to mass at the convent church every morning and on most days to complin as well. She was always there at vespers and sometimes with her husband at evensong.

  Olav did not know who these folks might be or where they lived, nor did he ever think to find it out. It was only that a change had come about in his mind: all the thoughts that had been habitual with him for years, all the daily doings and cares and all that belonged to his life as a grown man had been flooded by a fountain that had sprung up in him. It was beyond his own control—in all these years, when he had thought of his youthful memories, he had not recalled them in this way. Now they were not things of the past—he walked in the midst of them; it was as though everything was to happen now for the first time. Or it was as when one lies between sleep and waking, knowing that one’s dreams are dreams, but seeking to hold them fast, struggling not to be wholly awake. And every day he came hither to see this blind man’s wife, for at the sight of her these clear, dreamlike memories flowed more freely and abundantly; the image of the rich young wife became one with the sweet, frail shadow of the young Ingunn.

  And she was no longer angry with him for looking at her—she vouchsafed him this, he had noticed. One evening he entered the church, walking fast, and bent the knee as he passed the high altar. The scabbard of the sword he wore under his kirtle struck the pavement hard, driving the hilt against his chin. He must have cut a ridiculous figure—and when he looked round at her, he saw that she was bursting with suppressed laughter. Olav turned red as fire with anger. But after a while, when he looked round again, he met her eyes, and then she smiled at him—and then he had to smile too, though he was both vexed and angry. After that he kept an eye on her; she followed her book diligently, but all the time little secret smiles played like gleams across her lovely face.

  After the service he stood outside the church as she came out, leading her husband. She saw him, bowed slightly—Olav did not know whether it should betoken a greeting or not, but before he had time to reflect, he had bowed in return, with his hand on his breast. Afterwards he was vexed with himself—if only he had known whether she had meant to greet him or not!

  The next day he took his station outside the church door at the time folk began to come to vespers. She came, with her usual company; Olav bowed—but she made as though she did not see him and went in. Then he was angry and ashamed and would not look over to where she was; he tried to join in the singing and not think of other things. But presently he felt that she was looking at him—and as he met the glance of her great dark eyes, she smiled, a bright and gentle smile that was like sunshine.

  And after that they exchanged glances and smiles as though they had been old acquaintances, though they had never said a word to each other, and Olav did not know so much as her name.

  • • •

  Olav never thought that his shipmates must have remarked the change that had come over him. He was not himself aware that he had put a distance between him and the two seamen. Until now they had lived together as companions and equals; that Olav was the master of Hestviken, and Tomas a minstrel in Oslo in wintertime, while Leif was the son of a widow who served in the house of the armourer—this difference was so familiar and obvious that it concerned them no more than that Olav was fair and middle-aged, while Tomas was old and grey, and Leif a boy, red-haired and freckled. But now Olav moved among them without being aware that he scarce noticed them—as the young son of a lord instinctively and without premeditation puts off his childhood’s familiarity with the serving-men of the manor from the day he first divines the path that lies before him and feels that he is destined for another lot than theirs.

  Each time Olav was going into the town he put on his long kirtle; he shaved himself regularly and one evening he went to a haircutter. But the others made as though they did not see such things, and Olav never thought whether they saw it or not. He was not himself aware that he had become as it were another man and was acting more as became a lad of twenty than a landowner of wellnigh two-score years.

  Torodd and Galfrid had returned to London and it could not be very long before they would be ready for the homeward voyage. Olav thought of it with a twinge of reluctance; he did not feel that he was ready to leave England, and his vague thoughts of letting them go home without him stirred within him. The idea he favoured most was that of entering an order, the Maturines for choice, and setting out for the lands of the paynims.—But he was not yet ready for that. Just at this time it was as though he had grown deaf and dumb to the voice that had spoken so powerfully to him—but that should not be for l
ong. Only there was something else that he must think out first—he was not very clear about it. But he had already known as it were a foretaste of the peace that results when a man has surrendered himself to God. So he knew that he would make that surrender in the end.

  Two young Englishmen had bespoken a passage in the Reindeer—they wished to make a pilgrimage to St. Olav in Nidaros. They were good seamen both of them; so the Richardsons had no need of him as a shipman.

  And now the summer was already far spent.

  Three weeks had gone by since he saw the strange woman for the first time. One evening she did not come to evensong. As Olav left the church after the service, someone caught him by the mantle. He turned round—it was her servant, the old woman in the hooded cloak. She said something—he did not understand a word. And yet he knew. He nodded silently and followed the old nurse.

  Olav had never been outside Ludgate before. He remembered as he crossed the drawbridge that in an hour the curfew bell would ring, and then they closed the gates, and he wore no armour under his kirtle and no other weapon than the little sword he had hidden in its folds. But even these thoughts were not able to raise their heads above the frenzy that flooded his soul.

  Here under the western wall ran a little stream that came in from the country and flowed into the Thames, foul and stinking with the refuse that was thrown into it over the city wall. There were but few buildings before this gate, and the ground was marshy along the banks of the brook. But a few steps and they were on a path that led through the swamp. There were little ponds, shining white, and beds of rushes and brushwood on both sides. The low land farther out was dotted with farms and groves and church towers, and the sky, arching wide overhead, was covered with fleecy clouds, streaked with yellow from the setting sun behind.

  The path brought them back to the little stream. The woman said something and pointed to a cluster of houses beyond the meadows. Olav saw the gables of a stone-built mansion among trees and the roofs of outhouses. But they did not approach the place on the side where the stone hall stood; they followed a paling over which hung green thorn bushes, and Olav could smell that the cattle-yard was inside. Then along the bulging wall of a long mud house with a thatched roof. There was a gate in the wall, and the woman unlocked a little wicket in one side of it. A strong, rank smell of pigs met his nostrils, and between the outhouses the passage into which they came was so miry that he walked almost ankle-deep in greasy, black slush.

  They went across a little field in which linen was laid out to bleach, and the woman let Olav into a garden through a gate in a wattled fence.

  The grass was already bedewed under the apple trees, and in the cool air floated the scent of fruit trees and dill and celery and of flowers whose names he did not know, but all seemed bathed and cooled by the evening air. Here in the garden the daylight had already begun to fade.

  The woman led Olav to a corner of the herbary, where bushes grew in a ring; she said something. He guessed that he was to wait here, while she left him and was lost among the apple trees.

  Close by grew a cluster of tall white lilies that shone in the gathering dusk and breathed out their heavy, over-sweet scent. Then he saw that the lilies stood at the entrance to an arbour which was half-hidden among the bushes. Olav went a few steps toward it and looked in. Just inside the entrance hung a wicker birdcage; there was a bird in it and it hopped silently up and down between two perches. Within the arbour he saw that there was a bed prepared.

  His heart hammered and hammered in his breast; he stood motionless. A moth fluttered against his face, making him start.

  There she came across the grass among the fruit trees; she walked with bent head, holding up her light gown before her with one hand. Her cloak was thrown back over her slender shoulders, and Olav saw that she wore nothing but the thin yellow undergarment—with a gasp and a thrill of happiness he knew that in a moment he would clasp her tender, pliant body under the thin silk.

  She bore a silver goblet in the other hand. Now she stood straight before him, bending her head yet deeper. Then she raised the cup and drank to him. Olav accepted it and drank—there was wine in it, so sweet as to be mawkish.

  He handed her back the cup. The young woman paused for a moment with it in her hand; then she let it fall on the grass. And now she raised her face and looked into his. The great eyes, the wide nostrils, and the half-open mouth were like chasms of darkness in the pale oval. Olav took a step forward and threw his arms about the slender, silk-clad wife.

  She sank into his embrace, with her ice-cold fingers clasped about his neck. Olav bent the crown of her head to his lips; first of all he would drink in the scent of her—and found with a shock of aversion that she smelt of unguent, a luscious, oily scent. Nevertheless he kissed her on the hair, but the mawkish smell of her ointment filled his senses with repugnance, as though he had been deceived; he had thirsted for a breath of young hair and skin.

  Unconsciously he turned his head away. He knew well enough that rich ladies used such perfumes to anoint themselves with, but he disliked it. Although he felt how she clung to him in abandonment, him who for years had not held a woman in his embrace, yet as he stood there with his arms full of her, his senses were cooled by the thought that this was an unknown.

  No, this was not she—and it was as though he heard a cry coming from somewhere without; a voice that he heard not with his bodily ears called to him, aloud and wild with fear, trying to warn him. From somewhere, from the ground under his feet, he thought, the cry came—Ingunn, he knew, the real Ingunn, was striving to come to his aid. He could tell that she was in the utmost distress; in bonds of powerlessness or sin she was fighting to be heard by him through the darkness that parted them.

  The woman hung upon him with her arms clasped about his neck and her head buried in his shoulder. Olav was still holding her, listening, as he gazed over her head, feeling his own desire, not quenched, but as it were dissolved in foam, far away from this one. Ingunn called to him, she was afraid he would not understand that this stranger was one who had borrowed her shape, seeking to drag him under.—“No, no, Ingunn, I hear you, I am coming—”

  He strained all his senses to catch clearly this ringing cry of distress which did not reach his bodily ears, even as he did not see with his bodily eyes the form that struggled beneath folds of gloom. Now it grew fainter—

  Olav gently loosened the strange woman’s hands from his neck and drew back from her a little. She followed, and now she looked up—his head swam as he met her timid, gentle, animal look. She was so like that he was sick with desire to kiss the living lips, though he knew it was a stranger who looked at him beseechingly and cravingly from the depths of those eyes that were so terribly like. But he felt as if he must use his utmost force to tear himself away from her; it was like the temptation of his worst nights, when he could not help thinking of the fiord—of plunging into its waters and being free of it all.

  “No—Ingunn, I hear you. Help, Mary!”

  As he gave way, she threw herself into his arms, like a wave striking a ship’s bows, and unconsciously he raised himself on his toes as he shook himself free of her. The touch of her long, white hands was the last he felt. He turned and walked quickly away.

  Behind him he heard a low, long-drawn whine—and then cries, howls of scorn and rage. He swung himself over the fence—his kirtle caught in it a moment. “Now they will come after me,” thought Olav; “she will call her servants now—” He ran across the bleaching-field and between some cattle-sheds and reached the palisade. It was twice the height of a man, at least.

  How he got over he did not know, as he stood outside in a little dry field among haystacks—he had a feeling that he had pushed something against the fence, and instantly he seemed to recall having done the same once before—made his escape over a fence.

  “That was that.” He had said it aloud, standing ready to run, as he listened whether any sound came from within the enclosure. He was on a different side of
the mansion from that to which the woman had brought him. Olav heard nothing; then he ran straight across the fields, taking the nearest way to cover.

  Passing through the grave, he found a track that led by some mud cabins and down to the marshes about a little river. He did not know exactly where it was—it was down in a valley, but he followed the path along the river, thinking meanwhile that now the gates would be shut, darkness was falling fast. He could not enter the town, and could scarcely reach the Reindeer tonight. Well, there was no help for it. He passed his hand over his forehead and noticed that he had lost his hat. Well, well, so be it.— Here was a plank bridge, and when he came up the slope on the other side, he could see the light town walls and the high, pale watchtowers in the dusk. He continued to follow the ill-marked path across the fields to the northward—down toward the Thames the land seemed to be all swamp.

  How far and for how long he had walked he did not know, but he thought he must be somewhere to the north of the town. Pools of water shone here and there in the darkness, and from some place came the baying and howling of great deep-voiced hounds. Olav knew that the townsmen’s hunt had its kennels somewhere out in the country. But it had an ugly sound in the dark.

  To the left of the path he made out a piece of rising ground on which tall trees grew—there was a faint glimmer of dead leaves underneath them. Olav’s senses grasped, without his being aware of it, that the ground here would be as good and dry as he could expect to find. He went up the slope—the brambles caught and tore his clothes. Then he came on something like a suitable hollow and lay down, wrapping his cloak about him as well as he could.

  Now he felt that he was bathed in sweat, soaked and bemired almost to the waste, both kirtle and hose. Olav drew his sword and lay on his side, holding it under him. He fell asleep at once.