Ingunn stroked his hair again and again.
“A kiss you may give me for all that!” He rose on his knees, clasped her tightly in his arms, and kissed her on the mouth.
“You may have as many as you will,” she whispered close to him. The tears came trickling from her eyelids as she felt his strong, hot kisses all over her face and down her neck. “As many as you will—You might have had kisses every day!”
“Then I fear I should have been far too greedy!” He laughed low in his throat. “My Ingunn!” He bent her head back till her neck nearly touched the ground. “But now ’twill not be long—” he muttered.
“We must go up,” he said, letting her go. “ ’Tis long past dinner-time. I wonder how Lady Magnhild will like it that we left the house in this fashion!”
“I care not,” muttered Ingunn defiantly.
“Nay, nor I either!” Olav laughed as he took her hand and raised her. He dusted her and himself with his cap. “But now we must go home, for all that.”
He walked on with her hand in his, until they came to the path where they could be seen from the house.
3 July 29.
4 August 24.
3
INGUNN went about her daily life, after Olav had gone, unable to conquer a trace of disappointment. It was as though his visit had been to her least of all.
She knew it was wrong to take it thus. Olav had behaved prudently in letting it seem that he had given up his old claim on her: that she was his to possess and enjoy. In any case they could never have carried that through here at Berg. And he had gained the assent of both Ivar and Magnhild to her staying here as his lawful betrothed.
Lady Magnhild gave her gifts for her bridal chest—it had been sadly empty till now. A cloak of green velvet, lined with beaver-skin, as good as new; a tablecloth and a towel with a blue pattern; two shifts of linen and one of silk; the full furnishing of a cradle; three bench covers in picture weaving; a brass pot, a drinking-horn with silver mounts, and a great silver tankard—all this she received in the course of the next two months. And she got Aasa Magnusdatter to give her granddaughter the good bedding she had in store, with curtains and rugs, bolster, skin coverlets, and sheets of stuff. “Is Ingunn to be married?” the grandmother asked in surprise, each time her daughter begged some of her possessions. She forgot it from day to day.
Ivar promised to give her a horse and saddle, and money to buy six good cows—it would be too heavy a task to drive cattle from the Upplands to the Vik. And he bade her come south to Galtestad, so that she might choose from among the wearing-apparel left by his dead wife: “I would rather you had it than Tora—she is grown so high and mighty since she got this Haakon Thunder-guts and became the royal mother of his sons.”
He went so far as to find out what had become of Olav’s clothes-chest, which was sold at Hamar when the boy was proclaimed outlaw. The chest was of white limewood, an unusually handsome piece of work, with the finest carving on the fore side. Ivar bought it back and sent it to Ingunn at Berg.
The axe Kinfetch had been with the Dominicans at Hamar the whole time. Brother Vegard hid it away when the Sheriff took possession of Olav’s personal property. The monk said it was no great sin; for this axe, which had descended in the same family for more than a hundred years, ought not to come into the hands of strangers so long as Olav was alive. When Olav now came back to Hamar, Brother Vegard was in Rendalen preaching to the peasants there on the Paternoster and the Angel’s Greeting—he had made up four excellent sermons on these subjects, and with these he travelled about the diocese in the summer. But Olav had sought out the Prior and had done public penance in church for the manslaughter in the convent. After that the Prior had given him back the axe. But when he set out again for the south, he left it behind in charge of the monks.
Kolbein was beyond measure furious when Ivar applied to him to treat of an atonement on Olav’s behalf. Never would he accept fines for Einar’s slaying—Olav Audunsson should be an unatoned felon, and Ingunn could stay where she was, without honour and without inheritance, unless she would accept such a match as her kinsmen could provide for a debauched woman—a serving-man or a small farmer.
Ivar merely laughed at his half-brother. Kolbein must be mad if he knew so little of the times he lived in: if the King granted Olav leave to dwell in the land, then Kolbein might, if he pleased, refuse to accept the fines—let the silver lie by the church door for crows and vagabonds to pick up; Olav would sit just as safely at Hestviken for all that. And as to his betrothal with Ingunn, ’twas nothing but folly to seek to deny that the bargain had been made of old. That Olav had forestalled them, at the time they thought of giving the bride to Haakon Gautsson, Ivar now thought a good thing: he was well pleased that this nephew by marriage had shown while still so young that he was a man who would not be cheated of his lawful rights.
Haakon Gautsson was now engaged in litigation with his wife’s kinsmen about an inheritance that he claimed on Tora’s behalf; but Ivar had little thought of praising this nephew on this account; it was for this he had given Haakon his pretty nickname. Thus Haakon and Tora kept away this autumn, while Ivar and Magnhild were working to arrange Ingunn’s marriage.
Haftor Kolbeinsson had a meeting with Ivar at Berg to treat of the matter. Haftor was a hard, cold man, but upright in a way, and much shrewder than his father. He saw full well that if Olav Audunsson had made powerful friends who would advance his cause, it was useless for his father to raise difficulties about the atonement. The only way in which they could gain was by demanding that the fines be fixed as high as possible.
All this kept up Ingunn’s spirits. She accepted every gift as a pledge that now she would soon have Olav back, and then he would take her home with him. She yearned so for him—and when he was here last, he had spoken so little to her. It was natural, she saw, that he must now think above all of winning over her kinsmen and securing their joint estate. And when she was once his, she believed full surely that he would love her as in old days. Although he was no longer so blind and hasty as he had been then. The change in him was that he was now grown up—it was in him that she first became fully aware how many years had gone by since they were children together at Frettastein.
• • •
It was Haftor Kolbeinsson who brought news to Berg, when he came thither after Whitsuntide next spring to receive the second part of the blood-money for Einar.
Olav had made payment of one half at mid-Lent in Hamar—a German merchant from Oslo had brought the silver, and Ivar had appeared with him; Haftor received the money for his father. A part of the sum should now have been paid after Whitsuntide, and the remainder Olav himself was to hand over to the dead man’s representatives at the summer Thing, which was held every year at Hamar after the conclusion of the Eidsiva Thing. After that he was to have received Ingunn at the hands of her kinsmen.
But this time no man had come from Olav; on the other hand, Haftor had strange tidings to tell of the Earl, Olav’s lord. Queen Ingebjörg Eiriksdatter had died at Björgvin early in the spring, and Earl Alf must then have feared that the days of his mastery in Norway were over. The young Duke Haakon had hated his mother’s counsellors heartily ever since he was a little boy. Now he sent word to the Earl bidding him send to Oslo the mercenaries he had hired in England the summer before—it had been done in the name of the Norwegian King, but Earl Alf had kept them with him at Borg, to the great annoyance and mischief of the folk of the country round. The Earl obeyed the command in this manner, that he came sailing in to Oslo with a whole fleet and went up into the town with more than two hundred men; he himself lodged with his following in the King’s palace with Sir Hallkel Krökedans, the Duke’s captain. One evening some of these Fi’port wights, as the English hirelings were called, broke into a homestead near the town, plundered it, and maimed the master of the house. Sir Hallkel demanded the surrender of the malefactors, and when the Englishmen refused to give up the culprits, he had a number of them made pr
isoners, took out five men at random, and hanged them. Thereupon the Englishmen made an attack on the King’s palace and it came to an open fight between the Earl’s men and the townsmen, the town was plundered, and the whole of that part which lies from St. Clement’s Church and the river down to the King’s Palace and the quays was burned. The end of it was that the Earl sailed out of Folden with his whole host, and he carried Sir Hallkel with him as a prisoner—he sought to throw the whole blame of the disaster upon him. But these tidings were brought to the Duke while he lay under the coast in the south, on his way home from his mother’s funeral, and now he collected a force in haste and got his brother, the King, with him. They sailed across to Borgesyssel; Sarpsborg and Isegran were taken by storm, and about three hundred of the Earl’s men were said to have fallen or were slain afterwards by the peasants of the district; Alf’s seneschal at Isegran and several men of his bodyguard were executed by the Duke—folk said in revenge for Hallkel Krökedans, who had been put to death in the castle there by order of the Earl. Alf himself and the remnant of his host were said to have saved themselves by flight to Sweden, and King Eirik had made him an outlaw in Norway with all the men who were in his following.
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.