Throughout the holy-days of Easter he was as one who had just risen from a grievous sickness—not that he had ever been sick in his life; but so he felt it. “My soul is now healed—Ingunn, you must know that I wish you naught but well.”
He wondered whether he ought to tell his dream to Brother Vegard. But in these wellnigh twenty years during which the monk had been his confessor, he had never spoken a word to him in confidence outside the confessional. Brother Vegard Ragnvaldsson was a good man and a man of intelligence, but dry and chilly by nature—and then he had a sly and witty way of talking of folk, in which Olav delighted, so long as he was not himself the victim. Nor had he ever before felt any impulse to cross the fence that separated him and his confessor; rather had it seemed an advantage that the man outside the church was almost another person than the priest who heard his self-reproaches and guided him in spiritual things.
Before now he had thought of confiding this matter of Ingunn to the monk outside the confessional. But this would be like justifying himself and accusing her; so he would not. Doubtless Brother Vegard would soon be sent for to Berg; the poor soul must soon prepare herself to face the peril of death.
Then came the Wednesday after Dominica in albis. As Olav was passing through the church door after the day’s mass, someone touched his arm from behind.
“Hail, master. Is it you they call Olav Audunsson?”
Olav turned and saw a tall and slight, dark-complexioned young man behind him. “That should be my name—but what would you with me?”
“I would fain speak with you, a word or two.” Olav could hear by his speech that he was not from these parts.
Olav stepped aside to let the people come out of church and went a few paces along the covered way. Through the arches of the corridor he saw the morning sun just bursting over the blue-black ridges in the south-west, glancing on the dark open water between the island and Stangeland and lighting up the brown slopes, now bare of snow.
“What would you, then?—I cannot call to mind that I have seen you before.”
“Nay, we can scarcely have met before. But you will surely know me by name—Teit Hallsson I am called; I am from Varmaadal in Sida, in Iceland.”
Olav was struck speechless—Teit. The boy was shabbily dressed, but he had a handsome, dark, and slender face under his worn fur cap, clear tawny eyes, and an arched jaw with a mass of shining white teeth.
“So now maybe you guess why I have sought you out.”
“Nay, I cannot say that I guess that.”
“If you knew of a place where we could talk privily,” said Teit, “it might be better.”
Olav made no reply, but turned and went in front under the covered way round the north side of the church. Teit followed. Olav was aware as he walked along that no one could see them. The roof of the corridor came down so far that people outside could not distinguish who was moving in the shadow behind the narrow arches.
Where the corridor followed the curve of the apse, there was a way into a corner of the graveyard. Olav led the other by this path and leaped the fence into the kale-garden. This was his usual way to and from church; it was shorter for him.
When they reached the women’s house, Olav barred the door behind them. Teit seated himself on the bench unbidden, but Olav remained standing and waited for him to speak.
“Ay, you can guess ’tis of her, Ingunn Steinfinnsdatter, I would speak with you,” said Teit with an uneasy little smile. “We were friends last summer, but now I have neither seen nor heard aught of her since early autumn. But now the talk is that she is with child and near her time—and so it must be mine. Now, I know that she was yours before she was mine, and therefore I thought I would speak with you of what we should do—”
“You are not craven-hearted, methinks,” said Olav.
“No man can be possessed of every vice, and I am free of this one—” the boy smiled lightly.
Olav still held his peace, waiting. Instinctively he gave a rapid glance at his bed: his arms hung in their place.
“So long ago as the autumn,” Teit began again, “I let her know that if it could be so ordered, I was willing to marry her—”
“Marry her!” He laughed, two short blasts through the nose, with mouth hard set.
“Ay, ay,” said Teit calmly. “Meseems ’twas no such unequal match either—Ingunn is no nurseling, and her name has been in folk’s mouths once before. None had heard from you for ten years, and it seemed little likely that you would ever come back. Ay, she talked as if she believed it, and so she sent me packing; and I was angry, as well I might be, at such fickleness and said I would go my way, if she would have it so, but then it would be bootless to send for me later. She has not done so either—not a word have I heard from her, that she is in distress—and I know not if I would have gone to her now—I parted from her in no friendly fashion—
“But when I heard that you had come back and had been at Berg—and that you would have no more of her and went your ways when you saw how things were—then I took pity on her after all. And now they say she lies shut up in one of the outhouses and is given nothing to live on but dirty water and ashes in her porridge, and they have beaten her and kicked her and dragged her by the hair, till it is a marvel she is still alive—”
Olav had listened to him with frowning brows. He was about to answer gruffly that these were lies; but he checked himself. It was impossible for him to discuss this matter with Teit. And then he reflected how it would add to all their difficulties if these rumours got abroad.—And to how many people had this young coxcomb boasted of his paternity?
Teit asked: “Is it not so that you are a good friend of this rich Arnvid of Miklebö in Elfardal, her kinsman?”
“Why so?” asked Olav sharply.
“They all say he is helpful and good—the friend of every man who needs help. So I thought haply it were better if I betook me to him first, not to the Steinfinnssons or the old man at Galtestad. What think you of that? And if you would give me a token to your friend, or let one write a letter to him and set your seal on it-”
Olav sank straight down upon the bench. “Now methinks—! Is that your suit to me—I am to back your wooing?”
“Yes,” said Teit calmly. “Does it seem so strange to you?”
“It seems strange to me indeed.” He burst into a short, harsh laugh. “Never did I hear the like!”
“But ’tis seen every day,” said Teit, “that a man of your condition marries off his leman when he wants her no longer.”
“Have a care of your mouth, Teit,” said Olav threateningly. “Beware what words you use of her!”
As though absently, Teit took the little sword that hung at his belt and laid it across his knees, with one hand on the sheath and the other on the hilt. He looked at Olav with a little smile. “Nay, I had forgot—’tis here in this room you use to strike down your enemies?”
“Nay, ’twas in the other guest-house—and as for striking down, we came to blows—” he checked himself, annoyed at having been drawn into saying so much to the man.
“Be that as it may,” said Teit with the same little smile, “since it seems now that I have more part in her than you—”
“There you are mistaken, Teit. Never can you have part in her—Ingunn belongs to us, and whatever she may have done, we will never give her away outside our own rank.”
“Nevertheless it is mine, the child she bears—”
“Know you not, with your learning, Icelander, that an unmarried woman’s child follows the mother and has her rights, even if it be a freewoman who had been seduced by her thrall?”
“I am no thrall,” said the Icelander hotly. “Both my father and my mother came of the best stock in Iceland, though they were poor folk. And you need not fear that I shall not be able to support her, if you do but give her a fair dowry—” and he enlarged on his future prospects—he would become a man of substance if only he came to a place where he had opportunity to exercise all his art and kno
wledge—and he could train Ingunn to help him.
Olav called to mind the bookbinder who had been here in his youth—a master craftsman whom the Bishop of Oslo had sent up to Lord Torfinn, that he might finish the books that had been written in the course of the year. Olav had accompanied Asbjörn All-fat to the room where they work—the wife was there helping, boring holes in the parchment, many sheets at a time, and between whiles she pushed with her elbow the great kneading-trough which she had hung by her side; within it lay her child, shrieking and grimacing and dropping the morsel it had been given to suck—till Asbjörn bade her give herself a little rest and comfort the child. He felt sorry for her, said Asbjörn. When their work was done, the Bishop sent her a winter kirtle besides the man’s wages, calling her an able woman. Olav had seen them the day they departed: the master rode a right good horse, but his wife was mounted on a little stumpy, big-bellied jade, with the infant in her arms and all their baggage stowed about her.
Ingunn thrust into such a life—holy Mother of God, no! That was not even to be thought of. Ingunn outside the rank in which she had been born and brought up; it was so crazy a thought—he simply could not understand how it had come about that a fellow who stood so utterly outside had fallen in with her.
He sat watching Teit with a cold, searching glance as the other was speaking. Amid all the rest he saw that the boy was likable in a way. Unafraid, accustomed to make his own way in the world, Olav could guess; it would need no small thing to wear him down or quell his cheerful spirit—he was so quick to smile, and it became him well. He must have grown a tough hide in his roaming life among strangers, knaves, and loose women; but—He himself had now roamed about the world for nine years; he himself had had a hand in doings that he did not care to think of when he came home to settle. But that anyone from that world should have stepped between him and Ingunn, should have touched her—
Touched her, so that she lay there at Berg awaiting the hour when she must go on her knees upon the floor and give herself over to the pains and humiliation of childbirth—Ingunn’s child. No one, she had said, when he asked her who the man was. He remembered that he himself had said: “No one” when she wished to know who had helped him to escape to the Earl, when he ran away from Hövdinggaard. And in those years when he had followed the Earl he had met so many, both men and women, who, he knew, would be “No one” to him when once he was settled at home in Hestviken—he had known many lads like this Teit, had caroused with them in comradeship and liked them. But then he was a man, nothing else. When any from that world outside crossed the bond that held a man to his wife—then the life of both was stained for all time. A woman’s honour—that was the honour of all the men who had the duty and right of watching over her.
“Now, what say you?” asked Teit, rather impatiently.
Olav woke up—he had not heard a word of what Teit had just been saying.
“I say, you must put this—folly—out of your mind. But see that you get you out of the Upplands as quickly as you can—take the road for Nidaros today rather than tomorrow. Know you not she has grown-up brothers?—the day they hear of their sister’s misfortune, you are a dead man.”
“Oh, that is not so sure. If I say it myself, I am none of the worst at using arms. And I hold, Olav—since she was once yours—that you might well do something to help her to marry and retrieve her honour.”
“So you think I would count her case bettered if she married you?” said Olav hotly. “Hold your peace, I say—I will hear no more of this fool’s talk.”
Teit said: “Ay, then I must go to Miklebö alone. I will try it-will speak with this Arnvid. I hold that her case will be better as my wedded wife than if she is to be left with these rich kinsfolk of hers till they have tortured both her and our child to death—”
“But I once said that myself,” thought Olav, wearied out—“torture her and the child to death.—But then we were not to have a child—”
“For I have seen myself the plight she was in with the folk of Berg, ere ever this came about. And I cannot be sure that she will not count it a gain if she gets a man who can take her far away from this part of the country and from all of you. ’Tis true, when first she had let me have my will with her, she turned clean round, raved at me like a troll. But maybe she was affrighted—haply ’twas not so senseless as I thought at first. And until this time we had always been friends and agreed well together, and she never made it a secret that she liked me as well as I liked her—”
Liked him—so there it was. Until this moment Olav had felt no jealousy, in such a way that he could fix it on this Teit—it was she and her disaster that had troubled him to the depths of his being. The cause—had been “No one” to him too. But so it was, she had liked this rascal and been good friends with him the whole summer. Ay ay, in Satan’s name, the boy was comely, brisk, and full of life. She had liked him so well that she let him have his will—afterwards she had taken fright.—But she had given herself to this swarthy, curly-haired Icelander, in the kindness of her heart.
“So you will not give me any token or message to Miklebö that may serve me in good stead?” asked Teit.
“ ’Tis strange you do not bid me go with you and plead your cause,” said Olav scornfully.
“Oh nay—I thought that were too much to ask,” replied the other innocently. “But I had it in my mind, if perchance you were bound thither in any case, that we might travel in company.”
Olav burst into a laugh—a short bark. Teit rose, took his leave, and went out.
As soon as he was gone, Olav started up as though from sleep. He went to the door, and saw as he did so that he had picked up his little axe—a working-axe that had lain on the bench beside his hand among knives and gouges and the like. Olav was engaged in making some footstools for use in the church—the Prior had said they wanted some, and Olav had offered to make them.
He went into the convent yard and through the gate. The lay brother who acted as porter was standing there idly. Olav went up to him.
“Know you aught of that fellow yonder?” he asked. Teit was striding up the hill toward the cathedral; no others were in sight just then.
“Is it not that Icelander,” said the porter, “who was clerk to Torgard the cantor last year? Ay, ’tis surely he.”
“Know you aught of the fellow?” asked Olav again.
Brother Andreas was known for the strictness of his life, but his chastity was of the kind that has been likened to a lamp without oil: he had not much charity toward other poor sinners. He then and there bestowed upon Olav all those chapters of Teit Hallsson’s saga which were known to Bishop’s Hamar.
Olav raised his eyes to the churchyard wall, behind which the young man had just disappeared.
No greater harm could possibly befall than that the man came off scot-free.
• • •
Next day the sky was again blue and the air quivered with warmth and moisture about the bare and brown tree-tops. As Olav entered the courtyard of the convent late in the afternoon, the cook, fat Brother Helge, stood watching the pigs, which were fighting over the fish offal he had just thrown out.
“What has come to you?” he asked. “You were not at mass today, Olav.”
Olav replied that he had not slept till near morning, and so he had overslept himself. “But I wonder if you could get me the loan of a pair of skis about the house, Brother Helge.” Arnvid had asked him to come north to Miklebö after Easter; he thought of going today.
But would he not rather ride, suggested the lay brother. Olav said that with this going he would get on faster by following the ski-tracks through the forest.
He had just shaved himself when Brother Helge came to the door of the women’s house with his arms full of all the convent’s skis and a wallet of provisions over his shoulder. Olav had cut himself over the cheek-bone and was bleeding freely—the blood had run down his cheek and stained his shirt; his hand was covered with it. Brother Helge could not stop the bleeding eithe
r, and he wondered that such a little scratch could bleed so much. At last he ran off and came back with a cupful of oatmeal, which he clapped against the wound.
The sweet smell of the meal and the coolness of it against his skin sent a sharp thrill of desire and longing through the man—for a woman’s caresses, tender and sweet, without sin or pain. It was of that he had been robbed.
The monk saw that a veil came over Olav’s eyes; he said anxiously: “Methinks, Olav, you should give up this journey of yours—inquire first, in any case, if there be no other man in town who goes that way. ’Twas not natural that a paltry cut should bleed so freely—look at your hands, they are all bloody.”
Olav only laughed. He went outside, washed himself in the puddles under the drip of the roof, and chose a pair of skis.
He was standing in the room, fully dressed, telling the lay brother about his horse and the things he was leaving behind—when there was a sharp ring of steel somewhere. Both men turned instinctively toward the bed. Kinfetch hung on the wall above it, and it seemed to them both that it shifted slightly on its peg.
“ ’Twas your axe that sang,” said the monk in a hushed voice. “Olav-do not go!”
Olav laughed. “That was the second warning, think you?—Maybe I shall bow to the third, Helge.”
Hardly had he uttered the words when a bird flew in at the door, fluttered hither and thither about the room, and flapped against the wall—it was incredible how much noise the little wings made.